a couple of hours ago i learned the following piece of shenmue 3 lore
the old lady who runs the general store is actually the heir to a martial arts style. she changed the seling of her name and moved to this remote village after the murder of her husband. she may have also been a movie star in the early days of martial arts cinema.
Only just realized that the appearance of the blocks in SuperLite 1500 Series: The Tetris (PS1, Success, 2000)
is styled after the look of the blocks in Tetris The Grand Master (arcade, Arika, 1998)
Image sources:
in metal gear solid
to advance you need a frequency thats âprinted on the back of the cdâ and its literally on the back of the retail case and nowhere in the game. its kind of a throwback to copy protection of old, its a neat trick, i groaned out loud. i literally had to have someone tell me it because i would be totally lost. hell, half this game is that. lmao
the PS2 Metal Gear Solid Collection, which has MGS1 in a DVD case, doesnât have backs for the games (just a color pattern).
But on the back of the cardboard slipcoverâŠ
the blind dogs in stalker were originally going to be a whole warrior faction who were preparing for war on the two legs by eating psychogenic grass to get strong. all the oblivion lost design docs are filled with shit like this
The meeting of the stalker with the leader of the blind dogs
A poorly armed stalker is surrounded on all sides by doomed dog warriors, samurai dogs stand behind with a huge leader of the whole pack. He begins to speak in a hoarse voice:
âWe knew that sooner or later, a man called himself a stalker would destroy one of the gods of the tribe and deal with the units of doomed warriorsâ ...
âWe suggest you fight on our side. In the end, it depends on whether there will be a war between dogs and two-legs, or not. â
âWeak bipeds can kill only with the help of artificial weapons, but we learned how to find it and how it works, learned to fight it. The power of artificial weapons is not the same as it was before. â
âFrom birth, we realize that we will die when we enter the battle. Our warriors know that they will die, but those who survive will continue the battle. You will never defeat us with your weapons. If you refuse to follow my words, then you will die, we will send killers, and there will not be a single night when you do not think about your imminent death. "
âDestroy the damned creature deep inside that stands in our way. It restrains our warriors of light, torments our souls. Help us and we will help you. â
âI will send two samurai with you - if you betray us, then you will die of fear. I will raise all the flocks - you will never leave these lands. "
dont fuck with the dogs
i wish they had kept this in. i want to know if the dogs learned about samurai and modeled themselves on them (are the dogs literate? do they have a film archive?) or if they independently evolved social structures that humans recognized as samurai-like
maybe theyâre pulling information from the ânoösphereâ, which i now recall is a concept dropped on you in a monologue at the end of the game
ok, thatâs it, i have to read these design documents
I rented it when it came out and had to call the video shop and ask them to check it for me
IIRC if you keep messaging the colonel he eventually relents and just gives it to you, but he sounds super dejected that youâre missing out on this novel experience.
hell yeah furries in stalker
yeah you have to get the true ending to get that monologue, itâs surprising how many people donât, and all the documents you find in the X labs give you hints as to whats going onâŠi always liked that the game ends with this insane exposition and Strelok literally stepping outside to touch grass because what the fuck. I assumed the dogs got the samurai stuff from the c-conciousness because you can read about rudimentary experiments they did implanting commands in animals but one of the things i like the most about stalker is that the zone is actually mysterious because the guys who accidentally created it donât know what happened either just that the hole in the noosphere will inevitably expand. theres so much room for weird stuff cuz of that
Itâs playing on the imagery of Soviet dog experiments, isnât it? Pavlov and Laika and the resuscitations and all that. To think they were conscious and can call you out, can fight and take justice, as all the poison buried in the earth spills out in the Zone.
In the boss rush near the end of Konamiâs 1992 X-Men thereâs a recurring musical riff
that is straight out of Janet Jacksonâs 1986 song âNastyâ
Also
Although it would have been Jim Leeâs artistic take on the X-Men that was all the rage at the time, and the game includes Asteroid M, which kicked off the Lee era, and the Reavers, who didnât come along until the late '80s, the credits showcase John Byrneâs early '80s art
So basically I guess the dev team were still big early-mid 80s fans. ^ _^
well in the original concept the dogs are the result of the monolith using forced evolutionary viruses because itâs a million years old space rock responsible for human life but at some point it stopped working right and crashed into chornobyl. now its turning everything into hyper mutants. so, uh, I guess
the final game tracks waaay more along those lines because everything you see is the product of weird cold war era experimentation
honestly itâs pretty hard for me to keep the novel bits of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. separate from Roadside Picnic, I keep misremembering it back into the stronger form
Yeah itâs based on Pryde of the X-Men, a pilot from like 1989 that was released on VHS. Thatâs why itâs got Dazzler!
outside of some borrowed concepts from roadside picnic the main inspiration for stalker actually seems to be half life to me, the structure of shadow of chernobyl and the sci-fi elements from early builds back me up I think
Ah, right, THAT was what I was trying to remember and failing to re-find in the Wikipedia articleâI could have sworn Iâd remembered reading that some comic beat em up was based on some animated thingy. ^) ^
And it explains why Kitty looks like sheâs wearing a potato sack for pants! In the game. Why theyâre that way in the pilot I dunno. : P
I suppose the artists were just failing to capture the 80s baggy pants look quite right.
Stalker fanfic where someone asks the wish granter for Half Life 3
